Are you interested in getting your PhD, or are you in the process of doing so? Join us for a discussion about where to apply, what to expect, and how we can support each other. Come prepared with your questions and experiences.

Confirmed participants include:

-Chloe Chapin, MA, Fashion Institute of Technology; currently pursuing a PhD at Harvard University

-Justine De Young, PhD, Northwestern University

-Lauren Downing Peters, PhD, Stockholm University

-Ellen Sampson, PhD, Royal College of Art

-Tanya Wetenhall, MA, Fashion Institute of Technology

Cost: $5

Members who wish to use their free event pass enter code Member2019 at checkout.

Clothes with rips, holes, tears, no fear… the Golden Joinery game is here!

Join FSA for a members-only hands-on workshop based on the 500 year-old Japanese art of kintsugi where broken pottery is rejoined with golden seams, celebrating the imperfections. Bring your needy garments and repair them with all that glitters in this community-based mending session. All supplies and light snacks provided.

With support from the Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University, Fashion Studies Alliance invites participants for a one-day workshop focused on “Fashion in Pedagogy.” This program is developed for post-secondary educators and teachers of fashion studies, history, cultural studies, gender studies, environmental and labor studies, art history, material culture, and design history, among other interdisciplinary fields in the arts and humanities. Further, this workshop welcomes participants who teach applied design and design theory at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

The workshop will be structured into four themed groups with moderated discussions integrating participant submissions and questions. Accepted abstracts will be circulated to all participants prior to the workshop. The workshop will culminate in a larger group discussion and recaps of the findings and outcomes of each theme group. Findings will be recorded and distributed among participants.

Goals and Outcomes

The goals of this workshop are to raise questions and discuss how educators address and/or incorporate fashion into their teaching across disciplines. We aim to work through existing challenges and propose active strategies to resolve them.

To Participate

Current educators may submit a 300-word abstract responding to the ideas and questions outlined in one of the themes listed below and a 100-word professional bio by September 20, 2018. Submissions from Fashion Studies Alliance members will be prioritized. They are asked to submit their abstracts by September 13, 2018. Please email your submission to fashionstudiesalliance@gmail.com.

Theme Groups

1. Defining Fashion:

Discussion on how fashion is discussed across disciplines: Why do you talk about fashion and what do you mean when you discuss it? Should there be a standardized definition for fashion or is is more valuable to leave it undefined? Submit your definition of “fashion.”

Discussion on how we could successfully assess creativity and design from a critical, and material culture perspective: Is there a value to applying standardized rubrics for fashion across disciplines? Submit description of your methods or resources helpful in evaluation.

3. Synthesis in Fashion Pedagogy

Discussion on how synthesis is treated within fashion pedagogy: How much complexity should we acknowledge when teaching fashion or is it better to build a coherent base narrative? Is there a value in upholding fashion myths for the sake of synthesis? Submit an example of a myth that is perpetuated for the sake of synthesis.

4. Seminal Texts

Critical discussion on the seminal texts of Fashion Studies (theory, methodology and history): Is there a canon in the field of fashion studies? What canonical texts outside of fashion studies address fashion successfully? Submit three additional primary or secondary bibliographic suggestions with short annotations to be included in a fashion studies bibliography.

Please join Fashion Studies Alliance and Fashion Research Network for a co-sponsored lecture by John-Michael O'Sullivan, Turning the Page: the American Magazine at Midcentury.

In January 1950, Vogue put an Erwin Blumenfeld photograph of Jean Patchett on its cover. With its combination of elegance, attitude and drama, it has become an enduring, definitive image of its time. But Vogue represented only a single facet of a far more complex picture. The midcentury newsstand was a diverse, intensely competitive marketplace, reflecting a kaleidoscopic view of midcentury lifestyle, culture and attitudes. From high-fashion to teenager, and from mainstream to avant-garde, this talk will explore the conflicting visions of America presented by magazines at the start of a brave new decade. It will also look at magazine covers from January 1950 in the context of their creators — both those behind, and in front of, the camera.

Please join Professor Hazel Clark (Parsons) and Dr. Annamari Vänskä (University of Turku) for a panel discussion in the first of FSA’s “State of the Field” lecture series and to celebrate the launch of their new edited volume, Fashion Curating: Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Please join Nancy Deihl, Director of New York University’s M.A. Program in Costume Studies, and contributors for an evening of short talks and socializing to celebrate the release of The Hidden History of American Fashion: Rediscovering 20th-Century Women Designers (Bloomsbury, 2018).